Please remember to take an adequet amount of salt for this one. This rumor even if all is true, and this is a placeholder for a soon to be released army, it would not alone confirm a codex release.
Above all else, EpicWarGamer has my credit for being quite the slueth.
via EpicWarGamer
Well, I was busy on the GW website, changing root numbers and I changed this:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/landingArmy.jsp?catId=cat440170a&rootCatGameStyle=
Into this:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/landingArmy.jsp?catId=cat440171a&rootCatGameStyle=
.... if you did that now you see a Dark Angels screen. However, Dark Angels are filed under Space Marines, and they have a page:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCats.jsp?catId=cat1400016&rootCatGameStyle=
So I checked the date on the Picture of the Dark Angel shown:
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1121255a_LP_40K_DA.png
Look at the date: m1121255... so instantly, I was like... well this is old. Dang. So I went and looked at Grey Knight's pic:
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1350063_Daemonhunters_Army_Background_
and Necrons
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1350020_Necrons_Army_Background
And BA
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1890158a_LP_40K_BA2.jpg
Seems the date is just when the picture was made. The Sanguinor being the newest model in this set. So that only tells us GW likes to reuse its artwork.
I went all the way through to 440354, and found no Black Templar's main page (to my own sadness)
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/landingArmy.jsp?catId=cat440354a&rootCatGameStyle=
But on another link I did find this:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/images/product_army_landing_intro_bg_wh40k.png
Army Landing Intro?????? That is Helbrecht isn't it?
**update** Striking similarities with Side of White Dwarf pics (note the Skull step):
via ThePope
A mate just pointed this out, Deamon hunters http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/ca...tCatGameStyle= and http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/ca...tCatGameStyle= pages still exist as data mined links, they have always been there even thought the armies no longer exist as those named entities.
I how ever have pointed out (right or wrong) that where this is true, WH/DH links have complete product links such as "featured product" and "View entire army product range" where as the DA links do not show the range even though they clearly have a model range to link to.
This is a good point. This means that if it was an OLD DA page, then it would be populated.
Image for the DA and BT pics are .png, something being used more often nowadays, and the others are all JPEG format.
via StraightSilver
Just to say that that date is 5am May 12th 2012 which happens to be a Saturday......
I don't know if that actually means anything but it might.
m1121255
It's the old Rogue Trader dating system.
M1 = Current Millenium (this should really be M3 as we are now in third Millenium but GW for some reason use M1 as current)
12 = Year
12 = Day
5 = month
5 = timestamp
So from that you get year 12 of current millenium = 2012
12th day of May at 5am.
That's assuming I still remember how to work out 40K dates, but Saturday 12th May does sound promising.
Bear in mind I am purely speculating though and don't have my copy of Rogue Trader handy to work the date out correctly, but I'm pretty sure that's right.
Edit: OK, I just checked on Lexicanium and it appears that it doesn't follow the usual 40K dating conventions, so I may be off with that date. It's usually the other way around, but you never know.